We choose to go to the Moon and do the other things

Analyzing NASA's new human spaceflight directive

With the retired space shuttle Discovery looking over his shoulder, Vice President Mike Pence kicked off the first meeting of the newly reconstituted National Space Council today by declaring Americans will return to the Moon. He also said Americans will establish a commercial presence in low-Earth orbit, and use the Moon as a training ground to prepare for missions to Mars.

The highly anticipated meeting took place at the Smithsonian's Udvar-Hazy Center outside Washington, D.C. The National Space Council is an advisory group tasked with streamlining and coordinating national space policy for civil, military and industry space programs. Its members include the leaders of multiple government agencies, including the Departments of State, Defense, Commerce, and NASA.

The event helped clarify some of the Trump administration's space policy intentions, but there are many details yet to be addressed. Space council members have 45 days to submit responses on today's meeting, and the real indicator of what happens next will come from next year's NASA budget request.

In short, there are many questions, and we'll need answers before we can truly understand this new policy. In the meantime, here are our initial reactions and analysis.

NASA / Joel Kowsky

Pence and Discovery

Vice President Mike Pence speaks at the first meeting of the reconstituted National Space Council, with the retired space shuttle Discovery in the background.

Returning to the Moon

The biggest news to come out of today's meeting was Pence's authoritative declaration that Americans will return to the lunar surface.

"We will return American astronauts to the Moon, not only to leave behind footprints and flags, but to build the foundation we need to send Americans to Mars and beyond," Pence said.

Very few details were given on how a return to the lunar surface would work, or when it would occur. Pence did not say whether the Americans on the surface would be government or commercially-employed astronauts. And the agency's exploration goals already include a return to lunar space via the Deep Space Gateway, a small space station in lunar orbit, which would provide a test-bed for closed-loop life support, deep space maneuvering, and other technologies necessary for travel to Mars.

In a statement, NASA acting administrator Robert Lightfoot said the agency has "highlighted a number of initiatives underway in this important area (cislunar space), including a study of an orbital gateway or outpost that could support a sustained cadence of robotic and human missions." That implies the Deep Space Gateway is still on the table, and could theoretically fit within the broad plans outlined by Pence.

The fate of the Space Launch System rocket and Orion crew capsule have been a perennial point of discussion among space advocates, particularly during the transition to this new, business-friendly administration. Though it wasn't stated explicitly, today's discussions seemed to assume the continuation of SLS and Orion, at least for now. The programs have always had strong congressional support, and were intended to be destination-agnostic, both by design and congressional directive. NASA can thus shift its focus without a drastic restructuring of its major hardware programs.

In many ways, NASA never stopped its moon-focused human spaceflight program. The initial versions of SLS are essentially Moon-only rockets, requiring upgrades before lofting humans and hardware to Mars. Likewise, Orion can only sustain astronauts for a few weeks at a time without being attached to a supplemental habitat module. The rhetorical shift back to the lunar surface, then, is a full-circle moment for NASA's return-to-the-Moon Constellation program, which was canceled in 2010. Orion was, after all, originally Constellation's Moon capsule, and SLS can stand in for the Ares V heavy lifter.

The role of commercial space

The space council meeting panels were divided along typical "old space" and "new space" lines, with Lockheed, Boeing and Orbital ATK in the first group, and SpaceX, Blue Origin and Sierra Nevada in the second. Though the approaches to spaceflight between the two groups differ, both hope to capitalize on the country's new directive to focus on the Moon.

Will commercial and international partners be tasked with making the final leg of the trip to the surface? For ISS cargo and crew missions, NASA has engaged multiple commercial partners at a time in order to maintain competition and redundancy for critical programs. Does the administration intend to competitively award multiple contracts for lunar surface exploration? On what timescale?

If so, NASA's new human spaceflight program could essentially be a Constellation redux, with commercial launchers substituting for the Ares I, SLS for Ares V, and a COTS-like fixed-price competition for a lunar landing craft standing in for Altair, Constellation's never-funded lunar lander. This is speculation on our part, but such a balance could please space companies across the spectrum, as well as international partners.

Pence also said "the president has charged us with laying the foundation for America to maintain a constant, commercial, human presence in low-Earth orbit." How would this be beneficial to NASA, which is now tasked with promoting human exploration beyond low-Earth orbit? How long should NASA maintain a presence aboard the ISS, which will have been operating for 25 years in 2024, its current expiration date? Should NASA use its limited funds to to subsidize private space activities in low-Earth orbit? All of these are complex questions with no easy answers that will have to be addressed by the Trump administration and National Space Council.

NASA / GSFC / ISRO / Jason Davis / The Planetary Society

A stepping stone to Mars?

NASA's near-term human spaceflight goal has shifted back to the Moon.

A stepping stone to Mars

Pence also said the Moon will serve as a stepping stone to Mars, as was the case during the Constellation program. But how, and on what timeline?

The argument that the Moon is a direct stepping stone for Mars is complicated. There are major differences in entry, descent and landing technologies. The Moon's relative closeness keeps astronauts in near real-time contact with ground controllers, whereas a trip to Mars will entail up to 45-minute delays for a single question-and-answer session. The surface environments are different, changing the design on everything from rovers to spacesuits to dust filters. There are also the issues related to long-duration spaceflight—psychological health, prolonged weightlessness, automation—that a lunar base will not provide ready solutions to. Operational costs are another matter. NASA spends on the order of $3 billion per year to operate, crew, and resupply the space station. How much will it cost to maintain a presence on the Moon? For how long? How much money will be left over to then go to Mars?

There may, however, be broader U.S. interests in play. Pence and other national security-minded congressional representatives and military officers see the Moon as a strategic high ground, especially in regards to China. Space council executive secretary Scott Pace has previously said the Moon provides a way for America to strengthen international partnerships, which bolster the country's larger foreign policy interests. As we've noted before, one way to build consensus for a successful civil space program is tying it to larger national objectives.

But will NASA funding match these objectives? This has been a problem in the past, and the answer will be found in the agency's upcoming budget release next February. Earlier this year, the Trump Administration proposed a $561 million cut for NASA in fiscal year 2018. Will this new goal of reaching the Moon drive an increase to NASA's budget? Or will it redistribute existing funding to lunar projects as it did during Constellation? If so, from where will this funding be taken?

Presumably, the administration and National Space Council will consider the return on investment for different lunar surface stop-off scenarios, with different levels of involvement by NASA's international and commercial partners. Through its Humans Orbiting Mars workshop and report, The Planetary Society found great value in sending humans to Mars in terms of scientific return, searching for life, and challenging our technological capabilities. How these objectives will fit into a revamped human exploration program for either the Moon or Mars is still unclear.

Science

NASA's Science Mission Directorate also demonstrates peerless capability in the exploration and discovery of our cosmos, solar system, and planet. The Hubble Space Telescope may be the most successful science mission in human history, unlocking many secrets of the cosmos while wowing the public with beautiful images of the universe. No other space agency has sent probes to every single planet in the solar system, successfully landed vehicles on Mars, or sent probes beyond the heliopause.

But today's meeting was very focused on human spaceflight and military space activities. Pence did not mention NASA science, though some panel members did.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Science at NASA is a program with clear goals and a clear pathway, and it generally functions well. It's possible that the National Space Council may not spend a lot of time talking about NASA science because there isn't much to talk about. As interesting as it would be to see an extended discussion highlighting science successes and potential paths forward, we shouldn't read too much into the omission at this point.

Pence also said NASA would re-focus on human exploration. This could be a veiled reference to how NASA's Earth Science Division has grown over the past eight years to be the best-funded science division, and reflects a frequent Republican critique that NASA's portfolio has grown too broad and focuses too many resources on Earth observation. It could also be a broader statement critiquing the previous administration's shifting goals, which first proposed sending humans to an asteroid, then to an asteroid around the Moon, and then settling on Mars without orchestrating a commensurate programmatic or budgetary shift.

You could also parse this a different way, and emphasize the exploration part of Pence's statement. Perhaps the vice president was addressing the lack of exploratory human spaceflight. The ISS, in low-Earth orbit, does not explore new space. But the ISS has a NASA commitment through 2024—through the end of a potential second Trump term—and there are no discussions to prematurely terminate its operations.

It could also be merely a statement of how the new administration intends to speak about NASA. Both the president and vice president have met with astronauts, spoken with them on the ISS, and visited or mentioned NASA's prime human spaceflight centers around the south. If nothing else, their personal interest is with the astronauts and human side of spaceflight, and the romance of humans exploring deep space is a powerful story.

NASA / Joel Kowsky

First meeting

The newly constituted National Space Council holds its inaugural meeting on Wednesday, October 5, 2017.

Concluding Thoughts

As far as civil space is concerned, NASA already leads in every conceivable metric. The main critique—that the U.S. has no independent human launch capability to the space station—is being addressed by commercial crew, which was underfunded by Congress until 2015 (though technical issues now dog both SpaceX and Boeing, resulting in what could be a launch slip for operational ISS flights to 2019). But the fact that two companies are competing to provide human launch capability is itself a reminder of the depth of ability and ingenuity in the U.S. aerospace arena—both in government and commercial markets.

As Brian Berger at SpaceNews points out, the U.S. still leads in space, though its lead is narrowing. Human spaceflight has lacked clear and consistent direction, and despite the efforts to direct the program to Mars, very little progress beyond developing SLS and Orion has been made. The brief focus on the Asteroid Redirect Mission was deeply unpopular in Congress, and divisive in the scientific community. The lack of resources for human deep space exploration has persisted over multiple presidential administrations. And it's still not clear if that cycle will break now.

Yet we should not discount what we saw today: the Vice President, the Secretary of State, other top-level cabinet members, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, and the CEOs of the nation's top aerospace companies spent three of their precious hours speaking about space exploration. Yes, it's partly symbolic, but symbols do mean something, and we have already learned the Vice President is engaged in America's space program.

But at this point, we still have more questions than opinions on this new policy. We hope that the National Space Council and further statements by the Administration will provide clarity and the answers we need.

Comments & Sharing

9

Comments

Paul: 2017/10/06 03:34 CDT

May not be a bad route if it prevents trillions being wasted on suicidal missions to Mars.
And especially if they can be given something genuinely useful to do; something that would really constitute genuine colonization practice. Best would be assembling modular units of a telescope or telescopes which would achieve some suitable great task -- extrasolar planet characterisation, for example. Now that would be worthwhile and exciting on so many levels!!

Stephen: 2017/10/06 07:27 CDT

Assuming the administration's plans ever actually get off the ground (no pun intended)...
So Trump's moves to undo just about everything Obama ever did essentially includes undoing his scrapping of Constellation?
OK. That being the case, does that mean (in terms of manned lunar exploration) that the Obama Administration was eight squandered years?
I mention that because back in 2010 the Planetary Society was reported:
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TECH/space/02/02/nasa.constellation.reaction/index.html
to have said that "the Obama Administration maintains a genuine commitment to space exploration". Around the same time the Planetary Society's Louis Friedman was reported:
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TECH/space/02/01/nasa.budget.moon/index.html
as saying that he was "hopeful" that the end of Constellation "would lead to the U.S. returning to the moon more quickly".\
I do hope he didn't make any bets!
By welcoming Constellation's end Friedman basically chose to surrender the bird in the hand for a promise that that bush over there not only had a bird in it, but that it would be a much better bird. One less "flawed and bloated" which "would get the U.S. back to the moon more efficiently".
In short, he and the Society were sold a pig in a poke.
I hope better judgment is exercised this time around.
Will this latest initiative do any better than Constellation? Who knows! But one thing is certain. Constellation's basic problem was that it was never adequately funded. If that same problem happens with this latest initiative, then nobody should be surprised if, sooner or later, it too suffers the same fate, if not necessarily by this Administration then by the next, who will suddenly discover (shock! horror!) that there is not enough money in the kitty to pay for the bird they have and instead will try to persuade folk that they have this brand new gee-whiz birdie that is not only just as good it is ever so much cheaper.

Tom: 2017/10/07 08:28 CDT

The mention of Deep Space Gateway (station in orbit around the moon) makes me wonder if it is possible to move the ISS from Earth orbit to obit the moon. Is that possible?

Messy: 2017/10/13 08:53 CDT

Every vice president, except maybe Fritz Mondale, who notoriously tried to destroy the Apollo program after the fire back when he was a senator, has made the exact same speech after Nixon abandoned the Moon in 1971.
The Orion program isn't supposed to repeat Apollo 8 until 2022 or something. If we can't get back to the Moon by then, why bother with Mars?

Michael: 2017/10/13 08:48 CDT

Seven simple steps:
1. Let the ISS fall into the ocean- or try giving it away but nobody will take it.
2. Abandon LEO and Mars- both are dead ends.
3. Expand production of the SLS to a shuttle launch schedule of 6 to 8 launches per year.
4. Go back to the Moon for the ice using robot landers to shuttle water into lunar orbit.
5. Send wet workshops into lunar orbit and use kilotons of water for cosmic ray shielding.
6. Use tethers to connect wet workshops to provide 1G.
7. Use these wet workshops for lunar cyclers and eventually nuclear spaceships.

Galileo 7: 2017/10/15 08:37 CDT

"...the Moon provides a way for America to strengthen international partnerships..."
Good luck with that, as America at the same time is straining international partnerships by arbitrarily withdrawing from and/or negating existing international agreements on multiple fronts (trade, climate, nuclear proliferation, etc.). Makes it more difficult to maintain & build trust that America will follow through on any agreement and keep its promises.

Michael: 2017/10/15 05:55 CDT

The space agency has made a series of wrong turns since the end of Apollo and getting back on the best path is a huge challenge. That best path is a state-sponsored program of Super Heavy Lift Vehicle (SHLV) launches to effect a return to the Moon. The goal being establishing a permanent Beyond Earth Orbit (BEO) human presence by way of In Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) of lunar ice.
It is adding insult to injury that the correct decision is being made but what goes along with that decision- abandoning Low Earth Orbit (LEO), the International Space Station (ISS), and the commercial crew program- is not going to happen.

Geoff: 2017/10/31 08:11 CDT

The article stated $3 billion a year to maintain The ISS. If that is mostly launch cost. Please consider this. SpaceX has lowered launch costs from $10,000 per pound considerably. I believe SpaceX may lower launch costs to $1,000 per pound. If most of the cost is launch cost that $3 billion would now be $300,000,000. That reduction, increases Return on Investment considerably. This also increases capability, as well. GO "BFR"! GO SPACEX!
I am hoping to retire to a cave on the Moon. So I wish they would hurry along a bit...;-)

Michael: 2017/11/01 02:47 CDT

"That reduction, increases Return on Investment considerably."
The only "investment" was the tax dollars that went toward a cheap ride to the ISS. No such ride in sight but Musk has been handed his own satellite launch company. That is not ROI for the taxpayer. That is being taken in by a confidence swindle.
You are confusing sending humans to the Moon with launching satellites for profit.